Infrastructures for eScience / eScholarship

1

• Infrastructures for eScience / eScholarship
• German Initiatives in a European Context

• Prof. Dr. Stefan Gradmann
• Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin / Berlin School
  of Library and Information Science (B-SLIS)
• President of the German Association for
  Information Science and Information Practice
  (DGI)
• stefan.gradmann_at_ibi.hu-berlin.de

2
Overview

• German Players in a confusing environment
• Data ? Information ? Knowledge Selected eScience
  Initiatives
• Infrastructure for data and computing D-Grid
• eScholarship/eScience Virtual Research
  Environments
• Digital Library, (moderately) successfull Max
  Planck Digital Library
• Digital Library, not (yet) successfull German
  Digital Library
• From 'Information' to 'Knowledge' Theseus and
  Semantic Technology
• Context what can be done on national level?
• A concluding word on DGI

3
Players on the German Scenea Confusing
Environment

• Infrastructure funding BMBF (Ministry of
  Education and Research)
• Research and Digital Libraries funding Deutsche
  Forgschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)
• Academia 16 federal states
• Extra-academic research Max Planck Gesellschaft
  (MPG), Helmholtz, Fraunhofer (applied science)
• Concertation Deutsche Initiative für
  Netzwerkinformationen (DINI)
• Digital Library research HU B-SLIS (my
  institute)
• ...

4
Infrastructure D-Grid

• Data and computing infrastructure
• Funded by BMBF (2004-2010)
• The promise of grid architectures
• enable direct network based access to computers,
  storage, scientific instruments and experiments,
  sensors, applications, data, and middleware
  services.
• almost infinite computing and storage capacity
• cost reduction through a utility model.
• Community projects in high-energy physics,
  astrophysics, alternative energy, medicine and
  life sciences, climate sciences, engineering
  sciences, and scientific libraries.
• Integration project (DGI) for generic grid
  middleware resources such as authentication /
  authorisation facilities

5
D-Grid Big Picture

• European and global context
• Enabling Grids for E-Science (EGEE,
  http//public.eu-egee.org/)
• Semantic Grid Community (http//www.semanticgrid.o
  rg/)

6
DFG Collaboratories

• Virtual research environments for
• Network based collaborative working modes
• New collaborative scenarios
• New approaches for dealing with scientific data
  and information
• Using new components or new aggregations of known
  interoperable components of data and information
  related infrastructure such as
• Wikis, blogs, tagging,
• Project Management,
• Virtual organisations
• Primary data repositories
• Authentication structures
• Enabling a better co-operation of of research
  networks and information institutions and more
  specifically libraries.

7
Digital Libraries

• German Digital Library (DDB)
• not (yet) successful
• Badly needed as aggregating instance for
  Europeana
• For the time being all we have in hand is a
  position paper prepared by the federal
  government, the federal states and the
  municipalities
• Beta version planned for 2010 / 2011
• Funding situation remains unclear
• Diffuse customer and stakeholder profile
• Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL)
• (moderately) successful
• Strong technical partnership with eSciDoc (FIZ
  Karlsruhe)
• Relatively well focussed and coherent decision
  structures within MPG
• Clear customer and stakeholder profile (Max
  Planck Institutes)
• ? http//www.mpdl.mpg.de/

8
Theseus Semantic Technology

• Semantic contextualisation from 'Information' to
  'Knowledge'
• Has a conflictual pre-history I almost dare not
  to mention Quaero!
• Driven by computer science, applied science and
  industry with key players such as Fraunhofer,
  SAP, Siemens, DFKI
• ... an innovative, groundbreaking knowledge
  infrastructure allowing entirely new forms of
  knowledge access, knowledge management and
  web-based services, applications and business
  models. (Wahlster, DFKI)
• Scenarios
• ALEXANDRIA Knowledge discovery and organisation
  services for end users
• CONTENTUS Multimedia in cultural heritage
  institutions
• MEDICO - Syntax and vocabularies for medical
  image retrieval
• ORDO automated content categorisation and
  organisation
• TEXO Design, offering, combination, delivery,
  accounting of semantics based web services
• PROCESSUS IT enabled business knowledge
  administration
• http//www.theseus-programm.de/en-US/home/default.
  aspx

9
Key question what can / should be done on
national level?

• As far as Germany is concerned very little!
• Research infrastructure in a WWW based context is
  transnational by nature
• Fragmentation of the German landscape makes
  effective national strategies even less likely
• We can make the best use of German resources in
  directly contributing to European infrastructure
  endeavours
• The primary context thus is defined in
• European Research Agenda (ERA) http//ec.europa.eu
  /research/era/index_en.html
• European Strategy Forum on Research
  Infrastructures (ESFRI) http//cordis.europa.eu/es
  fri/
• Thus we substantially contribute (and sometimes
  take the lead) in
• DRIVER (http//www.driver-repository.eu/)
• Europeana (http//www.europeana.eu)

10
A concluding word on DGI

• DGI had a very strong position with much
  political backing in the 'Information Society'
  approach pushed by BMBF in the 90ies (Global-Info
  and related initiatives) - in a pre-WWW
  perspective
• We lost a substantial part of this position with
  the information paradigm shift to the WWW and
  as a consequence the decline of Global-Info and
  even more with the weakening of BMBF and the
  partial erosion of professional identity
• But we keep a large member base including key
  players such as for instance FIZ Karlsruhe major
  academic and industrial members!
• ? We try to strategically reposition DGI in the
  new paradigm of information and knowledge
  organisation and management
• eInfrastructure is well covered by other parties
• Digital Library research is well covered by
  others
• Semantic contextualisation for knowledge creation
  is the way to go
• Thanks for your attention questions?